THE ELEMENTS OF WOMEN

Set of 22 tarot cards

Graphite on watercolour paper

For my major work last term I had to make an artwork discussing ‘women in the western tradition’ which I thought was a very narrow (considering half the girls in my class are first-generation ‘westerners’) and very trite subject. I tried to bend the topic into what I do best. 

Traditionally, each tarot card should represent an element of the average person’s life; these explore the components of the Western woman. Tarot cards perform as a map of mental and spiritual pathways and my artwork questions what ‘pathways’ women are expected to take. The ‘elements’ of the Western woman seem to only circulate suppression, shame and servitude and often contradict each other (shame / vanity, sex object / virginity). The tarot cards also allude to life as a crude game – one with many rules and a long history which it maintains today (*cough* just like the expectations of women *cough*)